


Sensation Returns

by coldthing



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post Recall, Reaper76 - Freeform, mcreyes - Freeform, nanobot head cannons, pre- fall of overwatch, unrequited underage mcreyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 04:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13967466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldthing/pseuds/coldthing
Summary: “You followed him”“Yeah, well I had daddy issues, ask anyone”Reaper is silent for a few more seconds.“Your following me” Reaper finally says.“I still have daddy issues” McCree snaps.





	Sensation Returns

**Author's Note:**

> 3.17.18, some edits for clarity

 

No one knew where they sourced the technology for the eye from, let alone how they got it up and running without leaving Jesse a drooling imbecile.

Installing it in a half dead adolescent might have been some inventive form of punishment " _hey boys, misbehave and we'll give to the wasteland cannibals or rednecks to play with ",_ or it could have been payment _“here, stitch up our living guys and you freaks can play with the dead ones"_

What went on in the deep desert, stayed in the deep desert and the Deadlock Gang was perfectly happy to accommodate.

999

_"Exactly how fucking old are you" the man says, his head cocked to the side, birdlike, he's kneeling on the balls of his feet, muscles tense and ready to move. He's wearing jeans, a hoodie, body armor and the most unpleasant expression Jesse has ever seen a human face make._

_Jesse's nose is bleeding badly, he's pretty sure it was from being cold cocked with a shotgun rather than the failed attempt to get the eye up and running._

_"Seventeen" he says._

_"Bullshit" says the man. He's holding Jesse's pistol up in one hand, gingerly by the trigger guard as if the antique might bite him. "Where did you steal this piece of junk?"_

_Jesse remains quiet, his beard started coming in way too early and he can usually pass for much older. This guy isn’t having it._

_The man glares at him for a few more seconds, then stands up, rubbing his temple with two fingers._

_The zip ties are cutting into Jesse's wrists and ankles, he tries not to squirm._

_He honestly hadn't meant to ambush the black ops team that was coming in from over the hill behind them, he had just wanted a quiet place to piss and some time away 8 the bright lights and music of the dinner so his migraine would ease up a little bit._

_"Leave him" a man with a strongly accented voice offers to the one without the mask, clearly the leader._

_" He is tied up, he cannot warn the others"_

_"No way" says the first man "I know his kind of skinny, he will be out of those zip ties like a greased cat the second we turn our backs" he says._

_Jesse isn't stupid, but he doesn’t want to die. Right now, this man with the shotgun and his casually cruel subordinate are a lot scarier than any of the Deadlock bosses._

_He swallows back the fear, blinks away the migraine halos and stutters "No, no, wait, I don't want to die, I'll show you" he says._

_The unmasked man cocks his head to the side again, stroking his beard "show us what?" He asks._

_"You guys are government right, your here about the delivery"_

_The two men exchange looks "Right, yeah" the unmasked one says. “show us”_

_999_

_"well I'll be" says Commander Reyes "it’s the greased cat who keeps trying to shoot me with a stolen museum piece "_

_Jesse kicks his pistol out of Reyes’s hand, kneels to pick it up._

_"Didn't fucking steal it." He says. "My dad's fucking pistol" he says. He doesn’t even need to look at it to load it and spin the chambers back into place._

_The eye powers up of its own volition, time slows to a crawl, the noontime sun is hot on the back of his neck._

_Something whistles by Jesse’s ear, stings his neck._

_He falls over, suddenly without control of his limbs, barely sees a woman hop over a nearby boulder; she kneels by him, next to the man who had taken his gun, and puts a finger to her lips before gently ruffling his hair._

_Consciousness flees._

_Jesse wakes to soft golden light and the far-off rattle of shoes on tile. The Eye, his Eye, is bandaged tapped closed, and his hands are cuffed to the bedrails by soft hospital issue cuffs._

999

Reaper oozes into his personal space, his body contorting unnaturally until Jesse McCree’s has his back to the exterior wall of the bar and is face to face with the deaths head mask.

“Miss me boy?” Reaper’s voice sounds like water vapor hissing out of an improperly sealed pipe

“You don’t know the half of it boss” McCree says and tries to sound unconcerned when in fact the first wisps of black smoke slipping under the door had made anticipation clench in his stomach.

It is the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, behind a nothing bar that doesn’t have a name, the only technology being a television older than Jesse is and an antique payphone in the back.

McCree must endure the anti-omnic ramblings of the local farmers, but it's worth it to stay off the grid.

Reaper makes a rumbling sound that could never come from inside a human, and McCree feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end in electric anticipation.

“I might” Reaper says.

It isn’t Reyes anymore, never was Reyes in fact I; just a nanomachine colony that _thinks_ it's Reyes, but it still can make Jesse McCree do whatever the hell it wants chasing after the smallest scrap of praise.

Reaper laughs, still far to close and smelling like car exhaust and wet basement. Clawed fingers affectionately stroke McCree's cheek.

“Been itching to use this have we _boy_?” Reaper asks.

McCree doesn’t dignify that with an answer, instead he digs in his breast pocket for the package of cigarillos he had stowed there and the lighter in his jeans pocket.

Still without moving his gaze from Reaper’s mask, he raises the cigarillo to his mouth, bites off the end, spits and then settles it into the corner of his mouth.  Another quick motion has the cigarillo lit and he breaths out smoke from his nose. The smell of tobacco momentarily blocks out the chemical smell of Reaper’s body.

He barely gets to savor it before it is violently swiped from his mouth by a nearly translucent tendril of mist that resolves into one of Reaper's hands, holding the offending cigar gingerly like a live snake.

“That is a disgusting habit you picked up boy” Reaper says, the cigarillo crumples to ash in his fingers, burning down as the potential energy of the fire is sucked up.

Reaper opens the hand, the ashy remains of the cigarillo drift free.

“Y’all are a sentient smog cloud” McCree tries not to sound testy. “I jus’ saw you digest half an engine block. Don’t you talk to me about disgusting habits”

The engine block in question is up on concrete blocks in the bar's parking lot. half of it' s bulk has been sliced clean away as if someone had taken a sword to it, a veritable feast for a nanomachine colony.

Reaper does the last thing McCree ever expects him to do, he laughs, he laughs like a human, no more machine rumble, the sound he makes is pure Gabriel Reyes.

“Knew I liked something about you kid” Reaper says, he affectionately pats McCree’s left cheek again, McCree thinks he might be smiling behind that mask.

Reaper turns away, leaving McCree struggling to breathe, his heart hammering in his chest.

“Well?” Reaper asks when McCree doesn’t immediately follow him.

McCree straightens his hat “you know me boss” He says, falling back into the familiar ease of doing what he always did, following Commander Reyes

999

_“I thought we were supposed to be the good guys” McCree spits, it comes out red and one of his teeth feels lose. He probes it with his tongue and it aches._

_Reyes sighs, taking his cap off and dragging his fingers through his hair. “No, it’s just we are the wrong end of some of Morrison’s machinations, Morrison brings a plan together and my team is the scapegoat” Reyes doesn’t sound happy, but there’s little malice in his voice, just a sort of exhausted resignation._

_McCree holds the cloth to his bloody nose; the blood on his upper lip isn’t all from his nose, some of it is from his lip and some of it is from the gash from a stray piece of shrapnel on his temple. The blood is quickly drying on his face and starting to get itchy._

_They are in the cargo hold of a drop ship, all around him the engine rumbles and vibrates._

_Gerard has wedged himself in between two crates in a position that can’t possibly be comfortable, but he is snoring, and drooling slightly._

_Genji is offline to help manage his pain, connected to a power cell via an umbilicus, his body is belted into a chair and listing forward like a broken doll._

_Liao is up front with the pilots, secure behind their air tight pressure door, probably trying to get laid._

_For all intents and purposes Reyes and Jesse are alone._

_“Before we land, I need to warn you about Morrison, he’s going to want to talk to you about what happened, let me be absolutely clear, do not trust anything he says”_

_Jesse knows who Morrison is, who doesn’t, he's the one that goes on the news to explain what ever new atrocity Overwatch  has committed and manages to convince people that it was for their own good. He's  quite spectacular at it._

_The drop ship lands carefully, graceful despite its bulk. Gerard and Genji are out first, hefting their kit and making for the relative safety of the barracks, Reyes follows more slowly with Jesse trailing behind him like an abandoned puppy._

_A man in a blue uniform is waiting for them.  Jesse has seen his face on a million posters and pict screens. Jack Morrison, top of his class at USAFA, retired with honors after nearly 30 years in the field, Strike Commander of Overwatch._

_“Morrison” Reyes says, snapping a salute that could cut flesh._

_“Gabe” Morrison replies as he gives Reyes a look, it’s a pleasant expression, but it isn’t a human expression. It makes Jesse’s skin crawl a little bit._

_Reyes glares at him, though it doesn’t contain much heat “Jack Morrison, the great strategist” He pushes Jesse forward. “Jesse McCree, late of the Deadlock gang, currently trying to prove he isn’t a waste of oxygen and bandages”_

_“Picking up strays again are we Gabe?” Morrison gives Jesse a bright smile that doesn’t quite reach his flinty dead eyes. He proffers his hand for Jesse to shake. They shake hands and Morrison’s grip is just firm enough to let Jesse know who’s really in charge here._

_“Something like that” Reyes says._

_“it’s nice to finally meet you Jesse” Morrison says, “Gabe speaks highly of you” his voice is pitched so that it was clearly intended as a compliment, but the effect is studied and unsettling rather than its intended pleasantness. Jesse can’t help but feel like an insect pinned to a board, to be analyzed and cataloged and then disposed of when better specimen comes along._

_“Thank you, sir,” Jesse says, and braces himself for more of Morrison’s predator stare._

_But Morrison has already lost interest and is speaking to a uniformed aid who had followed him, Reyes claps Jesse on the shoulder and leads him away from the Strike Commander, back towards their barracks._

_“That went better than I expected” Reyes says, sounding pleased “come on, let’s get you settled”_

999

“So why are we here again” McCree manages to gasp when he finally forces the heavy blast door open.

“Recall” Reaper says awaiting him on the inside apparently uninterested in McCree's discomfort and refusing to give any greater clue until McCree had heaved the heavy door closed behind him.

McCree wipes his brow, sweaty despite the chill air, looks around, Reaper gives him an unfathomable look.

They are in a mothballed Overwatch facility buried somewhere deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Little more than a concrete bunker and a radio tower. it was supposed to be stocked well enough for a normal human to survive 3 weeks without leaving if McCree didn’t mind living on nearly expired MREs and using a chemical toilet.

Reaper does not have such bodily needs and seems to consume matter indiscriminately and only excrete the smoky ash of dead cells that smells like car exhaust

Something had blown through the safe house, leaving debris and wreckage in its wake. It didn’t look like Reaper’s handiwork, had none of the tell-tale half consumed look that went with Reaper's unique brand of information gathering.

McCree kicks over a discarded piece of electronics. He raises his hands to   one of the scorch marks on the wall when he feels Reaper’s frigid touch skate across his back, under his clothes.

“Whoa honey, back off” McCree says as Reaper coils into his personal space again. The wraith pulling his body around McCree’s shoulders like a shawl.  “You and, we ain’t ever been like that” he says.

The machines must have misinterpreted Reyes’s memories, and it hurts something deep inside McCree, to his relief freezing touch becomes a little less like a caress, but Reaper does not pull away.

McCree chokes as a the nanomaches bite into his temple, filling his visual cortex with noise and color. For a second he panics at the intimacy of it, but then he realizes that it isn't in his mind. Reaper is only talking to the Deadeye, machine to machine. He begins to feed McCree information, coordinates, manifests, communiques all flash before his eye and imprint themselves deep into his brain. A gift from whoever had installed the eye.

 Reyes has always been too thorough about recon.

“See?” Reaper asks as he withdraws from McCree’s vision.

“Yeah” Says McCree “shit,” he says. " can you find a less creepy way to do that"

Reaper looks at him for a second, then reaches up, tips the mask back revealing the shadow of a human jaw and chin, a gaunt cheekbone. The mouth when it smiles is _not right_.

“That’s even worse” McCree says.

Reaper has him pinned to the wall, hands above his head, one leg between McCree’s thighs.

“Stop this boss, we ain’t ever been like this” McCree grits out, hating the desperate little whine in his voice.

“ _I remember you_ ” Reaper says, “I remember how he _looked_ at you once you filled out a little” There is an approximation of a face under the hood. “He liked them young and impressionable.”

“You’re not him.” McCree says.

“I have his memories, I have his face” Reaper replies. They are so close now that McCree can smell Reaper, the smell of hot electronics. On top of him Reaper’s body is solid and heavy, but lacks any of the contours he associates with the human form.

“We were never like that!”

“But you _wanted_ it to be like that didn’t you” Reaper leans in closer until McCree can feel the warmth of a close body. The lips when they touch his feel reassuringly human.

McCree can’t talk, he can’t think, he can’t breathe, his throat closes, his mouth opens.

The kiss is warm, human, the tongue wet and mobile against his.  Reaper lets go of his hands, and McCree settles them where a human’s waist would be.

He _had_ wanted it to be like this, his dirty shameful little secret. His hero worship turned in on itself and became something else, something worse.

Reaper’s knees are between his legs, spreading them apart across his thighs and McCree  is just  so ready to just _give it up_ he isn't even embarrassed

He hears a groan and realizes he’s the one making it, there’s a slight vibration and a rumble that is Reaper laughing and then Reaper is hunched over him, kissing him fervently, one of his hands, cold and sharp cradle McCree’s face gently. The other pulls insistently at the bottom of his shirt where its tucked into his pants.

The console behind them lights up, “ _hola amigos_ ” says a bright feminine voice from the speaker “ _didn’t interrupt anything did I?_ ” the tone is lascivious.

Reaper is facing it without having to go through the intermediate stages of turning around.

“ _Sombra_ ” he hisses.

There’s a bright giggle from the console, and Reaper sweeps his coat out beside him before sitting down and glowering at the girl on the screen.

McCree is still leaning against the wall hyperventilating. He can still feel Reaper’s mouth on his, still feel the small waist and Reyes’s plush thighs and buttocks that had inhabited so many of his boyhood fantasies.

“Fuuuuck” He breaths out and gets to his feet.

999

_“What is wrong with him” Jesse asks later that night._

_“With who” Reyes is sitting on the bench in the arming room methodically working one of his knives against a whetstone. He already has four sharpened and neatly laid out on a black cloth by his foot._

_“With Morrison,” Jesse says, “he looks at you like he’s trying to figure out how to eat you” Jesse is supposed to be cleaning his pistol, but the gun just hangs loosely from his fingers._

_Reyes chuckles, “no one knows, he just came that way”_

_Jesse didn’t survive so many years in the Deadlock gang by being unobservant, he also didn’t survive so long by not learning as much as possible as he can about their resident apex predators._

_Reyes bunks with his soldiers despite apparently having his own private room where he stows his equipment._

_"Yeah, thought he was a sweet kid at first, then he dropped the pretense and became….” He pauses “…. That.”_

_Reyes doesn’t seem to want to talk any more about it._

_999_

_Jesse sees them, Morrison, his eyes open but glassy and unfocused, his hair mussed where Reyes’s dark hand is gripping it. Morrison’s mouth gone slack with pleasure.   it’s the most human expression Jesse has ever seen on the Strike Commander’s face._

_“Fuck, Gabe” Morrison’s voice is rough, Reyes lets go of his hair, the hand returning to his hips where he is gripping Morrison’s waist. Morrison drops his head down, his shoulders bowing, rests his forehead against the cool glass of his desk._

_Morrison’s blue coat is swept to the side and his trousers are pulled down to his knees, exposing the taunt flesh of his ass which is decorated by a red handprint. Reyes is fully dressed; his trousers open at the front and his shirt slightly untucked, he doesn’t even seem to be breathing heavily.  It would only take a quick shake of fabric for him to appear completely   innocent of anything, especially compared to Morrison’s debauched appearance._

_Jesse hears Reyes chuckle, and sees him put a bit more weight behind his next thrust “like that Jack?”_

_"Yes" Morrison says as he nods unevenly._

_“Say my name” Reyes says, sounding smug and victorious._

_“Gabe, Gabe, Gabriel” Morrison says, taking a deep breath between each repetition, as Reyes’s thrusts jar the breath out of his lungs._

_“Good boy” Reyes says, grabbing Morrison’s hair again, wrenching his neck and kissing him._

999

There's only so much stimulants and black coffee can do to keep you awake, after a while McCree just has to take his boots off, and curl up under a scratchy blanket in a cot. He's asleep before his head even hits the thin pillow.

He almost doesn’t wake when he feels the cot shift next to him,  but when icy fingers slide under his clothes and skate across his skin he is instantly alert.

Reaper settles in next to him, his body oozing around him to conform to his shape, like some kind of buzzing shifting blanket with a mind of its own.

"What the fuck boss" McCree says, not even trying to breath, holding himself still

"Your warm" Reaper says. "Need the heat"

McCree tries very hard to make himself shove the roiling mass that was currently coiling itself around his legs and hips out of the cot, but he can’t. He shivers, the mass is cold, and the texture unpleasant; oily smooth on the surface but gritty inside when you pushed down a little on it. Reaper pushes his way up under his shirt and spreads out against his chest.

finally Reaper stills, apparently comfortable in the amount of McCree's skin he has covered. It's like he's wearing a black bodysuit under his clothing, one that constantly tightens and shifts around all the wrong parts of his body..  McCree tries to relax, tries not to think about the skeins of black tissue stretching across his stomach and thighs.

 “Am I here just to be your personal space heater?” McCree asks tightly

“Yes” Reaper hisses, his voice inside McCree’s head rather than heard with his ears. “Bio energy is best, I can’t use power cells”

McCree wants to ask him to grow a body back, so it feels like he's sharing his bed with another human being, in the dark he can pretend its whoever he wants it to be, but he keeps his mouth shut.

999

_"You have a crush on the commander" a voice says from above him and Jesse looks up._

_Genji, only about 100 pounds of carbon fiber and trace organics is balancing on a narrow gable above his head, Jesse hadn’t heard him approach._

_“The hell are you on about?” Jesse demands, feeling his cheeks heat in embarrassment._

_“You're in love with the commander” Genji intones solemnly._

_“Bullshit” Jesse says._

_"You want him to kiss you" Genji says, he settles into a sitting position, he makes a sound that might have been kissing noises, but it's hard to tell._

_"what are you, twelve?"_

_The metal work that replaces Genji's lower jaw makes his face hard to read at the best of times, but the smugness just radiates of his body._

_"No, but you are" Genji says._

_Jesse bends to pick up a rock from the floor, flings it in Genji's direction, it makes a satisfying 'plink' when it connects with Genji's chest plate._

_Genji makes a mock hurt gesture, one knee around the gable, he swings down and drops to the floor._

999

Reaper sits down across from him, takes care to actually _sit_ , rather than simply reforming his body as needed.

He stares at McCree, until McCree can’t help but cringe under his gaze and set the disassembled pieces of his revolver aside.

“What do you want?” He demands.

“ _MIjo_..”Reaper starts.

“You're not him, so stop it” McCree cuts him off before he can get any further.

Reaper makes a sound, some approximation of a sigh. “But I want to be him”

“You shouldn’t want to be him, he was a horrible person”

“you followed him”

“Yeah, well I had daddy issues, ask anyone”

Reaper is silent for a few more seconds.

“Your following me” he finally says.

“I _still_ have daddy issues” McCree snaps.

“I don’t think it's quite that simple is it?” Reaper sometimes says things that Reyes would not have, displays a grasp of human empathy that Reyes had lacked, and had instead replaced with an over developed sense of justice.

Human empathy from a nanomachine colony. A nanomachine colony driven mad by the memories of a human being.

“Yeah, well,  I’m not all that smart” McCree reaches for his cleaning tools, making to start repairs on his revolver again.

Reaper tips his mask up, revealing the  contours of a human face below, leans forward into McCree’s space.

“Why are you here?” Reaper asks. “you could have reported me to the authorities, you could have gone and told that _monkey_ where I am, but you haven’t, your following me, _just like you followed him_ , what do you want from me?”

“Isn’t it about what you want from me?” McCree asks tightly. “I’m sure there are plenty of Talon lackeys who would kill to be your personal power cell”

“Or die to be it…” Reaper intones, sounding faintly amused.

“Exactly” McCree says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My literary aspirations are greater than my talent, please tell me how I'm doing and how I can improve next time on my [Tumblr](https://radio-halo.tumblr.com)


End file.
